Defining Fatty Acid Changes Linked to Rumen Development, Weaning and Growth in Holstein-Friesian Heifers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript ID: metabolites-1662271– review

Title:  Defining fatty acids changes linked to rumen development, weaning and growth in Holstein-Friesian heifers

The Reviewer recommend above mentioned paper for publication in Metabolites.

The topic undertaken by the Authors is very interesting and necessary. The identified metabolites offer serum metabolites which could inform the nutrition and healthy development of heifers. The Authors prepared the manuscript very carefully. Figures and tables are voluminous but still legible.

Author Response

see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Authors in paper titled:  Defining fatty acids changes linked to rumen development, 2 weaning and growth in Holstein-Friesian heifers tried to examine and confirm that

 the role of acetic acid and 3-PP within rumen 29 development and growth, suggest that weaning induces elevated levels of fatty acyls in re-30 sponse to a post-weaning stress induced innate immune response and demonstrate the utilisa-31 tion of fatty acyls in growth.

The overall paper content are sound but need some more data to be more effective and sound.

Please see down points for consideration.

 

Line 33 write full description of 3-pp (First time to appear).

Line 129 give more details.

Lines 173-175 give reasons for such change.

Why metabolomes was changed up to 11.5 month of age although feeding system is the same?

Why you didn’t measure and identify microbiota in rumen? It play a great role in the rumen development and may affect your results.

Analysis of microflora and microfona are needed. What do you think about that?

Lines 205-207 the time points peaks need more clarification at the genetic level.

Lines of 275-277, how about hormones? Do you think it may play a role?

Line 323: 15 our metabolites…… clarify

 

 

 

 

Author Response

see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article “Defining fatty acids changes linked to rumen development, weaning and growth in Holstein-Friesian heifers” describes the longitudinal metabolic changes in 20 Holstein-Friesian heifers during their development process from birth to the sexual maturity. The paper is generally well written, and the experimental design seems sound and well defined. Thus, I suggest acceptance for this manuscript. In any case, I pointed some corrections that I consider to be essential prior to publication.

 

Comment 1)The formatting of sections 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 are different and I recommend standardising it following the most common format for papers (continuous text without bullet points). Some points are repetitive and can be condensed in a more informative sentence (E. g.: point 6 an 7 from 3.1. section).  

Comment 2) Line 134: the number and/or the units of the diameter appear unformatted with bizarre fonts.

Comment 3) Line 136 and line 139: standardize the temperature presentation.

Comment 4) Line 138 and line 142: The pause symbols are useless, regardless of the recommendation to use continuous text in these sections.

Comment 5) Line 157: Clearly state the quality parameters applied and for which the models were considered valid (NC, R², Q², nr permutations, p-value).

Comment 6) Line 157 and line 159: Following comment 5, these two topics need to be more detailed and reformulated since the VIP scores are obtained after PLS-DA models.

Comment 7) Line 177: Where it reads “appeared to similar”; it should reads “appeared to be similar”.

Comment 8) Line 183-184: Acetic acid is not present in Supplementary Figure 2.

Comment 9) Figure 1 (lines 214- 217): On the caption of c) and d) is irrelevant to state the value of the VIP scores “>0.75” and “>1.0” since it is shown in the figure and only the ones with scores>1 should be considered. Moreover, the values of the validation parameters of these two models should be presented somewhere (can be here) to allow readers to evaluate the quality of the models.

Comment 10) Line 222: supplementary tables 3 and 4 are not in the Zenodo link.

Comment 11) Line 253: Standardize “1st-“ and “first”.

Comment 12) Line 373-374: The use of the term “biomarkers” is speculative. The establishment of biomarkers requires following a specific approach and the compliance with certain parameters, which were not followed in the current work.

Author Response

see attachments

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Interesting paper. The introduction is complete, the experimental design is appropriate, the metodh is adequately described. The results are presented clearly and the conclusions are supported by the results.

Author Response

see attachment

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All my comments are answered and paper can be accepted for publication on metabolites.